1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to an atomizing separation method and an atomizing separation device for separating at least one of components with different vapor pressures from a solution that includes the components by atomizing the solution into mist, and in particular to an atomizing separation method and an atomizing separation device that are suitable for separation of hot spring water, sea water or waste fluid, or a solution that contains a solute (e.g., organic acid, salt, sugar, amino acid, fatty acid, glycerol, glycol, nucleic acid and extract) in a solvent (e.g., water).
2. Description of Related Art
When solvents (e.g., water) in which low vapor pressure solutes are dissolved are removed from solutions of the solvents and the solutes, the solutions will have various features. For example, the hot spring water can be easily carried after condensed by removing water. This is convenient. The reason is that hot spring water the same as natural hot spring can be provided for home or public bath by mixing the condensed hot spring water with the bath water, or the like. For example, in the case where hot spring water is condensed to a concentration of 100-fold by removing water, only 2 liters of the condensed hot spring water is required to be mixed with a 200-liter home bathtub in order to provide hot spring water having the same water quality as the natural hot spring. 2 liters of condensed hot spring water can be easily transported by parcel delivery services, and the like. On the other hand, 200 liters of hot spring water cannot be easily transported.
Devices have been developed which condense hot spring water by evaporating the water component from the hot spring water or by separating the water component by using a reverse osmotic membrane (see Laid-Open Patent Publication Nos. JP 2002-273,412 A and JP 2007-38,052 A1). Also, a closed-loop chamber structure condensing device has been developed which extracts and condenses alcohol from the alcoholic aqueous solutions (see International Publication No. WO 2009-122,728 A1).
The device disclosed in JP 2002-273,412 A evaporates and removes the water component from hot spring water whereby condensing the hot spring water. This device consumes a large amount of energy. In addition, it is difficult for this device to condense hot spring water to a high concentration. The reason for large energy consumption is the heat of vaporization of water is very large, which requires this device to consume a large amount of energy as the large heat of vaporization when water is evaporated and removed. On the other hand, the reason for difficulty in condensing hot spring water to a high concentration is that hot spring components will be deposited and adhered on the surface of the device, which evaporates the water component. If hot spring components are deposited on the surface of the evaporating device, the hot spring components will reduce thermal conduction from the device to the hot spring water, and the evaporation efficiency of the device. In addition, the deposited substance cannot be easily removed. As a result, a large amount of manpower is required to remove the substance.
The device disclosed in JP 2007-38,052 A1 passes hot spring water through the reverse osmotic membrane for removal of the water component. It is difficult for this device to efficiently and quickly remove the water component from the hot spring water. For this reason, the condensation cost in this device will be very high. In addition, it is necessary to pass water through the reverse osmotic membrane in the reverse direction after the reverse osmotic membrane is used for a certain time period in order to clean up the reverse osmotic membrane. Therefore, this device cannot continuously operate for a long time.
The device disclosed in WO 2009-122,728 A1 vibrates an aqueous alcohol solution at an ultrasonic frequency to produce mist, and collects the mist to produce highly concentrated alcohol. In this device, carrier gas is circulated between an atomizer and a collector, in other words, in a closed loop so that the atomized mist is separated from the carrier gas and collected by the collector whereby increasing the alcohol concentration. When the alcohol aqueous solution is atomized into mist by ultrasonic vibration, the alcohol concentration of the mist will become higher than the alcohol concentration of the solution which is not atomized. Accordingly, alcohol with a higher concentration than the solution can be obtained by collecting the mist from the carrier gas. In this device, since the alcohol concentration is increased by collecting the mist from the carrier gas while circulating the carrier gas in the closed loop, the carrier gas (e.g., air) to be supplied to the atomizer for ultrasonic vibration of the solution is circulated and is used in the closed loop without exhaust. Since this device is necessarily collect fine mist for condensation, the mechanism for efficiently collecting the fine mist will be complicated. On the other hand, although the alcohol concentration of the mist carried in the carrier gas becomes higher than the solution, the difference is small. For this reason, the alcohol concentration cannot be so high in the device which collects the mist from the carrier gas.
The present invention has been developed for solving the aforementioned disadvantages. It is one object of the present invention to provide an atomizing separation method and an atomizing separation device capable of separating at least one of components with different vapor pressures from a solution that includes the components by atomizing the solution into mist at very high efficiency while reducing the separation cost.